


Heart and Lungs

by Neigedens



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubble, F/M, M/M, Multi, Multiple Selves, POV Second Person, Rape/Non-con References, Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:05:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neigedens/pseuds/Neigedens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've been swimming in the ocean your whole life despite common sense and <i>Arrested Development</i>'s frequent warnings on the subject, but she's the scariest thing you've ever seen lurking beneath the surface of the water. At least a shark would only eat you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on the kink meme. The prompt and the original fic posted in its thread are [here](http://homesmut.livejournal.com/15949.html?thread=33694797#t33694797).
> 
> Quote at the beginning is from "For You" by Bruce Springsteen.

_And don't call for your surgeon, even he says it's too late  
It's not your lungs this time, it's your heart that holds your fate_

**== >**

"The question I ask myself, Dirk," says Her Imperious Condescension, "is whether it's even worth keeping you alive."

Part of you wonders that yourself, but you don't bother speaking. You don't bother even _looking_ at her. She wasn't asking for a response.

You're still hurting badly from your fight with the drones. The fleet of them managed to push you off the roof into the water below your apartment. You hadn't expected to survive that, but you did. You came to and were shocked to be alive. Your shades were gone. So was Cal. Your clothes were, and still are, drenched from your fall.

You have no idea where you are. Your dream self is still hiding somewhere on Derse, and you suppose you should be taking advantage of that to determine your own location, but things on this end are taking up most of your awareness right now, for obvious reasons.

She steps down off her throne. You're still looking at the ground, but you can hear the clank of her trident against the metal floor, can hear her soft footsteps. She's standing in front of you and has the trident poking into your chest when you finally look up at her. If she's going to kill you you want to look her in the eyes while she does it.

"Part of me doesn't really want to off you," she goes on. "To be honest, Dirk, part of me doesn't really give a shit."

You almost want to dare her to do it, but then you think of Roxy, who's fighting for her life right now too, of Jake and Jane so far away, and you can't. You can't say anything.

"I mean, shit," she goes on, and now she's grinning with a shark's mouth, like she's trying to tell you a joke before she turns you into the human shish kebab. "That's the problem, isn't it? I kill you, and there's a bunch of spares running around anyway. I swear, you human children. You're worse than rats." With another loud clank, she takes her weapon away from your chest and is leaning on it as she looks down on you. "So what's the point, right? Unless I made a symbol out of your death, I suppose. Have some sort of public execution. Really get all the chess fucks into a lather of self-righteousness before the big guy comes and kills them all. That'd be kinda funny, huh, Dirk?"

Perhaps it goes without saying that you don't answer.

"I guess that's a good idea. I'll make an example of you. When we get back to Derse."

You look back down. You're living on borrowed time, which you sort of already knew, which you sort of have known your whole life. This is just a concentrated example of it. So it catches you off guard when she adds, "I won't kill you, Dirk. No need to look so gloomy." That gets your attention, so she has the pleasure of looking at your face when she says, "All right. You can strip him now."

The chess guys holding you (who are so huge they could probably make the late Hegemonic Brute look like Maplehoof the small horse) don't waste any time. You're naked before you know it, and she's holding the trident to your chest, scraping it along your skin until it's under your chin. She forces your head up so you can look into her eyes.

"Seeing you put in your place would be good for morale," she says. "My morale, if no one else's. I've been watching you, you know. You're such a smug little fuck most of the time. I'd love to see the Prince begging. On his knees." She runs her hand over your neck and you shudder. For some reason she can touch you all she likes with her deadly fork, but one tiny claw on your neck and you're trembling. Pathetic.

But it freaks you out. You can admit it: you're not afraid of dying, but you are afraid of that. Of becoming...something else. Something that's not you.

You are so fucked, but then that pretty much went without saying.

Her hands are on your face. "Why so quiet, Dirk? Are you scared?"

What kind of question is that? Not one that deserves an answer, you decide. You keep quiet. 

Her eyes narrow in record time. She's not patient. She stabs you with the trident, and even though she's obviously angry she's controlled with her movements. She scores your skin and cuts your chest enough to bleed, but not enough. Not enough to make you pass out, or kill you. She's not going to let you off like that.

"Dirk, you're not very good at this game."

You pick yourself up from the ground with difficulty; the chess guys stand there and don't offer to help. You're not looking at their grins, because really, the chess guys' smirks pale in comparison with her fishy maw. Even when she's not grinning you can just tell that it's bursting with teeth. "It is a game, isn't it?" you say. "You really expect me to play it with you?"

She laughs. Cackles, really, if you were going to keep with the witch theme. "Well, I'm not giving you a _choice_ , Dirk. You're not some dashing action hero. You're not James Bond or some shit. You're not getting rescued. You do realize where you are, don't you?"

If she wants you to strike up a conversation with her you guess you'll oblige her. It sort of takes your mind off being naked and bleeding, and it keeps her out of trouble for at least a short period of time. "Didn't actually catch that, no."

"You're in the Furthest Ring, dumbass. Where'd you think you were? More importantly, you're in the Furthest Ring with _me_. Do you _know_ who I am?"

"The Batterwitch," you say automatically.

She smirks. "That's all you know, Dirk. Believe me. I am so much more than that. Your little podunk planet posed no threat to me. It was like tipping over some five and dime convenience store. Like taking candy from a ridiculous Earth baby. Literally did not even break a sweat."

"You say I'm not James Bond and yet you keep prattling on like a super villain. I mean, I realize that is what you are, an actual genocidal overlord cake alien, but--" Abruptly, she punches you in the face. It might be kind of funny if it didn't hurt like hell, and if it didn't make you fall back into the chess guys' arms. They wrench your hands behind your back and one grabs you by the hair.

"Fuck but you're an annoying little shit. I didn't spare your life to hear you talk, Dirk," she says. "If you are James Bond then you know what your catch phrase is gonna be in this case? Guess." She hits you in the face again, just a sharp slap on the cheek that's like a caress after the shiner she probably gave you on your eye. You flinch, though, and don't answer. "I bet you can't guess what it is." Her voice is playful now as she hits you, sometimes punching you, something slapping your cheek, sometimes just caressing you and running her nails over your face. Eventually you can't take it.

"What?" you say through a split lip. "I don't know. Stop it."

She laughs. "You'll get it eventually, Dirk. Your catch phrase." She nods to the chess guys, and suddenly one of them forces you so you're crouching on the ground with your hand stretched out in front of you. The other one is unstrapping the huge hammer that he carries on his back.

He's raising it above his head and getting ready to bring it down on your hand. It's huge. You've broken bones before, but this isn't going to be like that. That hammer is so huge your hand is going to be pulverized into jelly. You can't stop yourself from trying to squirm away.

"Wait," you say. "Please, don't. I'll do whatever--don't. Please, no, no, no no no, please stop--"

A lot of words come out of your mouth, a surprising amount, actually, before the hammer starts its descent towards your hand. You stop breathing, just as the hammer stops in mid-air, less than an inch from your vibrating hand. The chess guy leaves it there, doesn't move, only looks at her for approval. You almost start crying.

"There it is, Dirk," she says, smiling. She waves and the big guy puts the hammer away while the other one lets you go. You're weak from the adrenaline and fall forward. "That's a great catch phrase. Isn't it?" She ruffles your hair before she nods and lets the chess guys lead you away.

The chess guys lead you down a long corridor. You suppose you're on the Condesce's spaceship, not that that particularly matters since you're now flying through the Furthest Ring, where time and space don't have a lot of meaning. "Now" doesn't have a whole lot of meaning.

You lose track of where you are on Derse because of this. Your dream consciousness and your normal one no longer gel up because while you currently are naked and trembling on the Condesce's ship, on Derse you are at a completely different point on your personal timeline. You think. It's all sort of giving you a headache, and you only have as long as it takes the chess guys to drag you down the hallway to dwell on it.

For the first time, one of them speaks. "What did she want again?"

"Cavity search. Just in case." They've taken you to a smaller room that's much less ornate than her throne room. "Bend him over. You wanna do it, or should I?"

"Oh, let me. You'll take for-fucking-ever like always."

You're already naked and she's already proven her point about how she can make you beg if she wants, but they bend you over anyway. One pins you down and the other kicks your legs apart as wide as you're able to make them. You try to bring them back together, but before you can the man has grabbed both of your cheeks and now is also spreading them as far as they'll go.

There's not a whole lot you can do about that except stay very still and tense. You probably make a noise, but at least you don't speak this time. You don't plead, even though it hurts very badly as the guy's hands, with fingers like sausages, force themselves into your ass and spread it open.

Carapaces have hard flesh, obviously, with a hide like a crab shell, but the skin on their hands, like that of a human's, is a little different. On the palms the skin is thinner but not softer, with a brittle feel like paper. You remember when you noticed this for the first time. You made a carapace friend once by chance, when you were out looking for Roxy. He helped you out and the two of you found her drifting serenely, humming to herself up by one of the towers of the queen's palace. Your friend worked as a very low-level bureaucrat in the queen's entourage, which is why you eventually lost track of him. You figure he went the way that the Black Queen herself did after the Condesce took over: either he's dead or was exiled to Earth, and now he's scrounging for unopened tins of cat food in Lalonde's basement on that watery shithole of a planet.

You try to think of him, and of all the times he went with you Roxy-hunting, instead of what's happening. You fail, though, and instead of spacing out you grit your teeth and can't keep yourself from snarling, "There's nothing in there, you fuck. Jesus." Your voice gets a lot higher pitched than you meant it to sound. You're hissing through your teeth, pressing your forehead into the table they've made you lean over.

"He wants you to pull out," says the chess guy holding you to the other carapace. "Maybe you should. Please don't tell me you're enjoying it."

The other carapace laughs. It's a very deep laugh, with a boom in it like the Kool-Aid man breaking through a fucking brick wall. You shudder as he finally does pull his fatass fingers out of you. You're flooded with relief, even though you know you shouldn't be. There's not a lot to be relieved about.

"Were you prospecting for gold or something?" you ask, and receive no answer. They only drag you out and down the hall again like nothing even happened there, like they didn't just hold you down and pretty much rape you--

You try and stop yourself from following that train of thought because you know that the next time is just going to get worse, but you can't do that either. You start trembling, so hard that the chess guys have to start taking more of your weight, which they do without comment. Your legs fold under you as they bring you to the cell where they're going to leave you. You curl up into a ball and stare at the door for a long time after it shuts, and the worst part is that you're not even dwelling on what they've just done to you, or what they're going to do to you. You stare and don't think of anything at all. It's a long time before you realize that you've been shivering, and that there's a tense pain in your jaw and an ache in your head.

**== >**

The cell doesn't have anything in it. There are no clothes for you there, no bed or pillow or even blankets. The floor is soft, but not in a way that's very reassuring. The ship feels like an organism, not like a machine, so the walls and the floors have what looks like veins and arteries embedded in them, but the ship also has a heavy, sluggish feel to its movement, as if the ship is dying. As if it's already dead. You can't tell if this is a side-effect of travelling through the Furthest Ring, or something more sinister.

After awhile you're not quite so shaken up and cold. The Condesce and her carapaces won't bother you again until you reach Derse, so there's not a whole lot to do now besides think about these things and sleep. Time doesn't mean a lot here in the Furthest Ring, and you've never had the most accurate of internal clocks anyway, so you sleep for what feels like a very long time and, for the first time in your life, you dream the dreams of normal people. At least, that's what you assume you do. You've always been awake on Derse, even as a child, but now you don't dream of Derse. You dream of someplace else.

Here on the ship your dreams are a random amalgamation of weird places and people you've never seen and never met before. You never speak to the strangers, and they all seem too scared or far away to talk to you, which is fine.

It seems wrong to you, though. Normal people's dreams, you thought, are supposed to be a disordered slurry of subconscious images and emotions with either utterly senseless or transparently metaphorical meanings. The only time you get a taste of something like that is when you see Roxy floating by you in Derse pajamas. For a second you forget that this is all a bullshit subconscious scenario orchestrated by your traitorous brain. You go chasing after her but she drifts away too quickly for you.

Reflecting later on, you will decide that this was probably for the best. It was just a dream, so if you had found her there's no guarantee that she would have been asleep. She might have been awake and she might have spoken to you and you would have had to wake up in the cell again and know that it was all a lie your subconscious cooked up just to fuck with you. That's what dreams are, for normal people. Subconscious kicks to the balls.

Instead you wake up denied and irritated, and instead of Roxy the first thing you see are the chess guys. There's Officer Carapace, the one who executed the utterly unnecessary full body cavity search on you earlier, and Deputy Douchebag, the one who held you down.

They're here because you've landed. You're back on Derse and the Condesce is ready to see you again.


	2. Chapter 2

**> Be the Condesce**

You are now Her Imperious Condescension, ruler of the now-defunct Alternian empire, emissary to the Horrorterrors, sole survivor of the Vast Glub, servant to Lord English, conqueror of planet Earth, and new queen of Derse.

You are really bored.

The Battleship Condescension has just docked itself on Derse, which doesn't help much. The Prince of Heart's exploits were the most exciting things happening on the planet, and now, thanks to your own efficiency and ruthless cunning, you've successfully put that problem on ice for the time being. You really shot yourself in the foot with that one.

It's all so _banal_ , is what it is. Subjugating a planet of weak-willed, rust-blooded carapaces and hunting down children is a waste of your talents. You are, in fact, a big fish in a small pond. Sure, you _could_ use your new captive as propaganda material in order to publicly humiliate Skaia and its human heroes, but really, what is even the fucking point? Since being netted into service by an unstoppable, indestructible demon you've really stopped caring about this shit like you used to. After a certain point you wish the plebes could just opress themselves.

But they won't, and thinking like that is a glubbing quitter's attitude. You have your two right-hand Brutes drag Dirk into your throne room and force him down on his knees in front of you.

"All right, Dirk. I think at this point you and I can play with our cards on the table, can't we? You can tell me where your dream self is hiding, if you like. It would make me pretty happy and I might let you put on some clothes or eat something. The thing is, though, it doesn't really matter at this point. You belong to me now, Dirk. Nothing your dream self does can change that."

He stares up at you with huge gray bags beneath his eyes. They've lost the gleam they had in them a few nights ago, which is only natural. Still, it animates you a bit to see that. Not enough that you'll pick up the flogger yourself, of course. You have your Brute for that.

"How do you figure that?" he asks, then winces when the Brute strikes him with the leather strap.

"Didn't tell you to talk, Dirk. But I'll answer you anyway. You see, once all these chess guys see you like this they'll probably rethink using you as a figurehead for their revolution. In fact, they'll probably rethink the whole revolution thing in the first place. These guys are essentially livestock, Dirk. I own their asses, just like I own yours."

He snorts. "So you're a megalomaniac. I suppose I knew that, but I didn't know if you bought into your own bullshit."

"Ten strikes for that one," you tell the Brute. "Take your time." You like to tell the Brute to take most tasks slowly, since you figure that's easier on his fragile mental capacity. The Brute nods and really winds up on the first strike. The flogger you gave him is just a long strip of black leather the former queen of Derse had sitting around (for what you couldn't imagine.) The smack against the skin of Dirk's lower back is very loud. "I thought you were smarter than this, Dirk." On the second strike, which is even harder than the first, the sharp edge of the flogger catches him and now there's a line of blood running down his back. It must hurt him very badly; he's leaning forward on his hands now and shaking visibly to keep from crying out.

"Yeah," he says suddenly, louder than you would have expected of him. "I know, I know. I don't expect you to talk, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." He makes a weird noise, somewhere between a cough, a laugh, and a sob.

You shake your head in mock-pity. "You're losing it already, Dirk. And you're wrong again. I don't want you to die." You wait until the Brute is done with his ten lashes (you wouldn't ask him to do anymore; you suspect that counting any higher might be beyond him) and then approach Dirk, putting a hand on his now sweaty shoulder.

"Here's a secret, though," you say, speaking softly into his ear. "Not to brag, but I know how to deal with this sort of thing. In carapaces and in humans and in trolls, too, for that matter. You know how there are some of these chess guys who are docile little woolbeasts? They're the ones who are going to see you on your knees in front of me here and not give me anymore cheek. But some of the others...well. There are these guys, for instance." You nod to the muscle standing behind him, the ones with the floggers. "Carapaces like your old friend the Hegemonic Brute, too. And the Archagent, to take another example. I'm sure you've heard of him. The stab-happy asshole.

"See, guys like that are a bit different. Guys like that are like those knives that Noir's so crazy about. Dangerous, but you just have to know how to direct them. So what I'm going to do is get a bunch of those type of people, the crazy-eyed type that just want blood, and invite them to take out some of their aggression against you. That seems like a good idea to me. What do you think, Dirk?"

"Great for morale, like you said," he mutters. "Fuck you, just fuck you."

You smile and nod to the other Brute. "Bring them in. Tell them I have a treat for them."

**> Be Dirk again**

Probably a bad idea, but OK. You are now Dirk again and you really, really wish you weren't. You would rather be anyone else.

You don't recognize the carapaces you see here, which is fine, you suppose. They're just like she said, a bunch of unstable freaks with a knack for drawing blood and apparently unrestricted access to whatever fetish gear the former queen had laying around the castle.

A tall, gaunt-faced one with pointy, claw-like fingers pulls you up onto your hands and knees and starts looking you over like you're one of those woolbeasts the Condesce wouldn't stop going on about. As he does, you make a little mental catalog of your injuries, just to pass the time:

Two fingers on your right hand are broken. Your whole hand's been throbbing for awhile, and it's worse now that the pointy guy's making you balance on your hands and knees.

There are some lacerations on your stomach from when one of the Brutes got creative, but mostly it's your back that is ripped to shreds, and there are bruises running down your ass and legs. Once (only once, thank fucking _god_ ) when they were smacking you they caught you on the underside of your balls with the leather and you let out a screech so loud you'll probably never live it down, which works out in the end because the way this beating's going you're not going to live much longer anyway.

Lastly, you're dehydrated to a degree you didn't think possible, between the blood loss and the fact that they haven't let you drink anything in ages. The nauseous feeling in your stomach is almost more overwhelming than the pain.

The carapace feeling you up like a bad date is talking to you. "Get up." When you don't, he grabs your arm and yanks. "I said get up. Approach Her Condesce."

The Condesce hasn't taken part in your brutal carapacian hazing, but she's watched the whole thing from her throne, looking bored, like she's in the waiting room for a hair appointment. Shit, you feel bad for that beautician, you think, and in the back of your throat you make a noise somewhere between laughter and pure abject terror because the writhing tentacles of her hair swirl around you and shit, you are so, so fucked, you are bloody and beaten and you can't even think straight. You stand before her, shaking in the same spot she had you brought to in the first place.

Now not only is your body busted into bloody chunks, but your mind is...all you can focus on is the pain. You can't apply five layers of analysis to everything like you usually do. Just standing up straight is taking effort, so you barely have attention to spare for the carapace's words to the Condesce.

"He can't take much more," he tells her. She smiles.

"You're a doctor now? I thought you were a dignitary."

The carapace shrugs, and suddenly you recognize him. You've seen him in the tabloids, if never in person. "He's more useful to us alive now than he is dead. Don't you agree?" The tabloids always made the Draconian Dignitary look taller, you decide.

"Oh, undoubtedly," she says. "But I thought it would make you happier to see him like this. Didn't he kill a friend of yours?"

The Dignitary rolls his eyes. "Right." He turns and suddenly out of nowhere he's taken out his weapon and is giving you a hard whack across the shins. You fall to your knees on your shaky legs, more out of surprise than anything. "There. Consider him avenged. May his lumpy, partially dismembered body rest in peace, I guess."

The Condesce laughs as you get back on your feet. "Why do you think we should keep Dirk around?"

"I don't like some of the guff our agents have been getting on the street about the Prince's revolution," the Dignitary tells her. "Seems to me like we need to get the word out that this boy ain't in any condition to lead anyone anywhere right now. There's a reporter here from _The Enquiring Carapacian_ , he could do the story for us. Guy owes me a favor."

"Oh? What kind of favor?"

"I didn't have him killed after that puff piece he did on me last month. Boundless fucking magnanimity of me, if I do so say so myself." You remember that puff piece. It was about the most eligible bachelors among the queen's agents; you remember laughing at it in your bedroom here on Derse. It feels like another lifetime now.

"Excellent. Go fetch him. In the meantime, Dirk, come over here."

You take a step towards her, but she stops you. "That's no way to approach your betters, Dirk. Try again."

For how close to brain-dead you are right now, (not to mention _physically_ dead to boot,) it takes you a shamefully short length of time to figure out what she wants you to do. You sink down again and awkwardly crawl the short distance to the throne on two knees and only one hand. You feel surrounded by her, by her uncoiling tendrils of hair and her huge fucking smile.

"Do you want a sip of water?" Suddenly she's holding a glass bottle in front of your eyes. A sip? Fuck that. You snatch at it, but she's even faster than you are, or at least her hair is. "Dirk. Really. Is that any way to act?" Two hanks of her hair are wound around your wrists. She has the bottle in her hand, just out of your reach.

You can almost smell the water, you think. "Please. Please can I have it," you manage to say through your dry mouth.

"Here you are, Dirk," she says kindly. She tips the bottle towards you and the water spills out. You lunge forward but you're too shaky and half of the stream lands on your face, goes up your nose or onto the floor. You don't care, though, you're catching it in your mouth and it is beautiful on your tongue. Much too soon she's holding the bottle upright again.

"More. Please, more," you say as her hair tentacles hold you back once again.

"Did your lusus teach you to drink that way?" she asks you, shaking her head. "Honestly, how uncivilized can you get? You're like an animal, Dirk. I see you let some drop on the floor. You better clean that up before I let you have any more."

Later on you will tell yourself that you were inwardly disgusted by what you're doing now, but that's not even true, really. You are so, so thirsty. Your mind can't process anything but that, so it's without hesitation that you lean forward and lick the little puddles off the floor, feeling grit on your tongue and absolutely nothing else. Out of the corner of your eye you see that the Dignitary's back with the reporter he didn't have killed.

"What, you want me to take pictures?" asks the carapace, his eyes moving quickly from your pathetic form before freezing at the sight of the Condesce.

"That's what they're paying you for, isn't it?"

The reporter stammers, but before the Dignitary can convince him that it really is in his best interests to do what her highness asks of him, the Condesce herself is staring at the reporter and smiling, which of course changes the guy's expression to one of absolute terror. He gapes.

"Dirk's not very photogenic like this, is he?" she asks him in a voice that's almost companionable. Her smile, of course, is the furthest thing from companionable, but still the reporter is able to reply.

"N-no, your highness."

"I can fix that, possibly, if we go to the balcony. Dirk, up. We're going outside." She's talking to you like you're a dog; she's going to keep you following her on your knees like you're a dog. It doesn't really faze you at this point. "Follow me," she says to the Dignitary and the reporter, who, if possible, is even more miserable than you are about being part of this entourage.

The doors of the throne room are thrown open onto the balcony, looking out over the towers of Derse. In the distance you can see the moon, and your own bedroom tower. Before you can get all misty-eyed about that, she's drawing your face towards her with one hand.

"You're forgetting something, Dirk," she says. "I gave you water. Aren't you grateful?"

For the three sips of piss-warm water? Sure. The Dignitary isn't the only one who can practice boundless fucking magnanimity, is he? "Thank you," you mutter. "Thank you, your highness."

"Hmm. Poor show of gratitude, Dirk. We'll work on that. You need to impress upon this dutiful member of the press how happy you are that I've spared your life. You're such an ungrateful little shit. So I'll explain to you how I'm going to help you out. Did you know I have the power to heal?"

You shake your head.

"It's true. I can steal life, but I can give it back, too. The Dignitary's right, Dirk; you're slipping fast. Do you want me to give your life back to you?" She kneels in front of you; one hand is on your chin and the other is cradling your own injured fingers. Her touch isn't cold and clammy like you might have thought it would be, it's warm and pulsing with an energy that's so warm, you could fall into it, you could fall into _her_ but you can't, you can't...

"Yes," you say. There really isn't any other option here; you will tell yourself that later, too.

"You belong to me, don't you?"

You pause. In your periphery you can see the Dignitary watching you with his sharp eyes, the reporter looking like he expects to be shanked any minute, too worried about his own carapaced hide to care much about what's happening to you. Still, you _can't_ , you can't just fold like a fucking card table like this.

"Dirk?" she asks, and her voice is pleasantly curious. Her stubby nails are digging into your chin, though, and her hand is clenching your broken fingers. You're biting your lip and she's speaking louder and harsher, a horrible upbeat trill in her words. "Maybe you're changing your mind, Dirk. Maybe you're _not_ happy that I gave you your life back. That's fine. You can bleed out here on my balcony, make a big fucking mess. That's just fucking fine with me." She drops your face and now her hand's squeezing yours. You finally cry out as the bone pops back into place. "Just remember, Dirk, there's no second chance for you after this. Nobody here is going to give your corpse a kiss on the lips to bring you back to life. Not after they saw you sucking at the ground by my feet earlier."

You wish the bone would go numb, or you would just pass out or something, but this fails to happen. "Stop it. You proved your point, just fucking stop it."

"What point was that, Dirk?"

You shudder, but fuck, you might as well say it, right? "You've got me. I'll say what you want, I'll do what you want, just _stop_. Just fix me. Heal me."

She drops your hand finally and stands up. There's no trace of a smile on her face now. "Kneel, Dirk. If you want me to heal you then quit your bitching and get on your knees."

You do hoist yourself up. Miracle of miracles. She eyes you over for a second, and suddenly is grabbing you by the neck. Her fingers are pulsing with that energy again. It's blue and feeling it wash over you is even sweeter than the feel of the water on your tongue was earlier. You close your eyes and for a second you forget where you are.

When it stops, when she lets you go, you fall forward with the strange feeling. You feel fine. Your mouth isn't even dry anymore. You feel washed clean, almost.

Not literally, though; you're still covered in your own blood. "Get the hose," she snaps, and the Dignitary stares at the reporter until he makes a high-pitched noise of realization and runs to the end of the balcony to drag a hose and some buckets over.

"Here," she says, throwing them at you. The bucket seems to make her smirk, but you don't know why; it's just filled with rags that the castle groundskeeper probably uses to clean the windows or something. The reporter turns on the hose as she shoves it at you. "Get to it," she snaps, folding her arms. You're not hurt anymore, but your limbs are still stiff with hesitation and that weird healing energy, so she snaps again. "Clean yourself up, Dirk. I'm not doing everything for you."

You grab one of the rags, wet it under the hose, and start wiping the blood off of your stomach and the parts of your back you can reach. You can't reach all of your back, of course, and some blood dripped down your ass and your front to spots you're not going to touch in front of the Condesce and the fucking chess man ogle brigade.

She laughs. "Look at that," she says. "He's being shy. I made him embarrassed. Do you need help, Dirk?"

"No," you say, but she's grabbing the hose and the rag from you. She fills a bucket with the water and dumps it over your head with a stupid little giggle.

"He's begging for it now, isn't he?" she asks no one in particular. "Him and his bucket." She's rubbing you down with the rag now, up and down your ass. Some of the blood had run down your stomach into your pubic hair, so she washes that for you too. She rubs it a bit more than you think was probably necessary, then smiles at the choked noise you make in your throat. "There. Now you're ready for your close-up, Dirk."

That's the picture that appears on the next day's edition of _The Enquiring Carapacian_ : you, crouching by the Condesce like a wet dog with your hair falling in your face, her standing beside you with a bucket in her hand and an almost gleeful expression on her face. She'll show it to you the day after; you'll just have time to take in the picture and the stupid fucking headline ("DERSE'S NEW QUEEN: A REAL HEARTBREAKER?") before you turn away in disgust. Disgust at that awful pun, of course. The sick shame and embarrassment you feel in your stomach is something else entirely, something you save for when they put you in your cage and you sit there trying your hardest not to fall asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**== >**

Over the next couple of days they'll put you in the cage every so often. You don't want to sleep there because your dreams are still upsetting you. Not with their content, because they're filled with the same blank-eyed strangers and unfamiliar terrains as they have been since you were captured. The fact that you're having dreams at all is what's upsetting.

You have no clue where your dream self is, or what happened to him. Which makes _no fucking sense at all_. It's like saying you have no idea where your left foot is, or you've lost track of what you did every Tuesday for the past month. You suspect your dream self might be dead, but you think she would tell you if that had happened. You doubt she could keep it to herself, considering how much she likes to taunt you about your own death.

"Don't worry, Dirk," she told you the other day. "When I kill you, it will be a spectacle to behold. There'll be tears in your eyes, and you'll be thanking me from the bottom of your heart. It'll be an epic death. A fitting death for the tale of a true coward."

And so on.

**> Dirk: Dream**

One thing you will say for dreaming: you're always whole in them. Whatever weird injury she sent you to bed with is always gone, and you're always wearing clothes again as well. Even the benefit of that is dubious in your mind. Being free and whole in your dreams makes it close to unbearable to go back to being beaten and naked while you're awake.

You purposely avoid the nobodies in your dreams, but occasionally they try to talk to you. They're easily evaded usually, but this time you're blindsided, tackled from behind as you walk through a green forest.

"Look, would you just... _don't_ run away this time, OK? I know you think you're some kind of elusive ninja, but Jesus. Throw me a frickin' bone here."

You've never paid much attention to what the dream strangers look like, but your attacker is sitting on your back so you're kind of obliged to give him the once-over as best you can from the weird angle. You can't see his eyes because he's wearing shades, but you crane your head and you think that maybe, just maybe, he's wearing a _cape_ , which is what impels you to twist around and sock this completely whack figment of your imagination in the face.

The figment curses and you're able to throw him off. "Wait! Fuck.... I'm trying to help you, dumbass," he calls to your retreating back. You don't turn around. "Bro! Bro, wait. Come back," the kid calls once more. You run and run until you're not in the forest anymore. You run until you're in the middle of a desert of pinkish-red sand. You run and run until you're out of breath and suddenly are ripped back into consciousness.

You wake up in the Condesce's arms. "Good nap, Dirk?" she asks, petting your hair as you sit up, breathing heavily.

"Get off me," you say before you can stop yourself, twisting in her grip.

"What was that, Dirk?" she asks, her voice sweet. "Were you talking to me?"

 _Shit._ You can't do this right now. Your mouth's dry as you say, "No. No, I wasn't--"

"Who were you talking to, then?" Her fingers are digging into your sides and her tone has a sharp edge to it. You can tell she's about to reach for her trident.

" _Nobody_. It was a dream, I--it was just a dream."

"Was it really?" Her tone is both thoughtful and disbelieving, but her grip softens on your sides. You can breathe again. After a second, she picks up your leash. "Come on, Dirk. Let's go for a swim."

A few days ago you made a break for it. You almost made it to the balcony when one of the Brutes got lucky and intercepted you. She let the Brutes have their way with you a bit before fitting you with the harness and the leash. The only time she lets you take it off is when she takes you into the pool with her. In the pool she will attach one of your ankles to a long tether that's anchored to the bottom of the pool.

The pool is enormous, but it has to be to accommodate her. Usually after attaching the rope to your foot she'll tie your hands together too, but today she doesn't bother.

Half the time time you don't know why she bothers with anything. While she swims she almost always ignores you and leaves you to tread water furiously with just your legs. She barely ever touches you the way she did in front of the reporter that first day, and there are no more dirty jokes about buckets. She's obviously bored with you; even hearing you scream doesn't make her face light up like it once did. You don't know why she doesn't just send you away, or kill you. It's not really a topic you're comfortable discussing with her.

Other topics you'd be uncomfortable discussing with her: jack near everything. Being around her, period, is uncomfortable, even though you've gotten used to it by now.

Watching her swim is still a sight, though. You don't understand how she can get that huge thicket of hair wet without sinking to the bottom of the pool, but then you also don't understand how her hair can be made up of prehensile tentacles, so whatever. You've been swimming in the ocean your whole life despite common sense and _Arrested Development_ 's frequent warnings on the subject, but she's the scariest thing you've ever seen lurking beneath the surface of the water. At least a shark would only eat you.

It's nice to have your hands free for once, though. You do a backstroke and try not to think where you are, which as a strategy completely fails as you get sucked into her wake.

"You swim well," she says, her tone carefully light as she floats beside you.

What's the right response to that? Thank you? It seems a bit late in the game for her to try flattery. "I grew up by the ocean," you end up saying, and then add, "Thanks to you."

She laughs. The two of you float around the huge pool in almost companionable silence. It's weird, and nice. The fact that it's nice makes it weirder.

Finally she says, in that same chatty way, "Jack thinks I should order your execution soon."

Is she asking you what you think about that? Truthfully, you feel pretty ambivalent on the subject. "Jack thinks everyone's execution should happen sometime soon," you say, and she laughs again.

"I, personally, think we should wait. Your two Prospit friends are dead, after all, and while your dream self is still hiding somewhere, I think he's no longer in the picture. I think if he was important he would have tried and rescued you by now, don't you think?"

You don't say anything.

"But your last friend is another matter. I think I should wait until the Rogue is dead, too, before I show everyone the Prince's head."

"I think you'll be waiting a long time, then," you say without much forethought, which you know from experience is a bad idea.

"Oh?" She grabs you by your shoulders and pulls you so you're floating on top of her. Yep. Bad idea. "And why is that?"

"Because--" Your voice skips a beat as her hands run down your sides. "Because Roxy will never let you catch her."

"Won't she?"

"Not alive, anyway." You don't know why you're so sure of that, but you are.

Her hands are at rest on your hips now. "Jealous of her, are you?"

You can feel the tentacles of her hair licking at your feet, getting ready to wrap themselves around your ankles or wind up your legs. "Maybe a little," you say with a sigh.

She laughs. It's not a companionable laugh this time. You can feel it rumbling up from deep in her belly.

"You do please me, Dirk," she says in your ear. "I would miss seeing your face looking so bleak like it does first thing every morning. Especially now that you're such a good boy most of the time. Did you ever think you'd fall into being a slave so easily, Dirk?"

She laughs enough at her own not-joke that you can get away with not responding to that one.


	4. Chapter 4

**== >**

She keeps you around a lot when she's going about menial tasks of ruling the kingdom, but after you swim with her she sends you away. The planet's orbit is about to reach its point closest to the Furthest Ring, which is when she communes with the Horrorterrors. She'll always send you away for that.

"Sometimes the dark gods ask to speak to Derse's prince," she told you once. "But I think they finally understand that you're mine now, so talking to you is unnecessary when they're already talking to me."

It doesn't really bust you up too badly that she's misleading the sentient fathomless sky-calamari into thinking she speaks on your behalf, but being left alone in the cell isn't the most fun either. You've started to notice that your dreams are much more vivid when Derse is closer to the Furthest Ring, and the dream strangers become a lot pushier, too.

When you fall asleep this time another one of them corners you. You had thought she had maybe been following you for awhile, but suddenly the path you were walking led to a dead end. Now you have no choice but to face her.

You don't, though. You stare at the dense underbrush surrounding you and wonder if it's worth trying to fight through it.

"I don't think you could break through that," says your stalker. "Not even with an unbreakable katana."

"Who says?" you ask, still not facing her. "I'm sort of new to this, but if this is my dream, shouldn't the dense thicket of crap disappear at my command? Do I really have to ask my dream stalker woman to step aside or will you just get out of my way on your own?"

"I won't go," she says. "Not until we have a talk. None of us had been able to do that with you yet, and not for lack of trying."

You turn around. "I'm listening. Even though this is stupid. I've already decided that normal people's dreams are stupid."

The girl smirks. Her smirk is the only thing you can see of her face. The rest is covered by an orange hood. "Strictly speaking, these aren't normal people dreams, either. This isn't a dream. Well, it is, of course, but it also is actually happening. I am an actual person who you are actually talking to. I'm sleeping right now, too."

You raise your eyebrows at her. "And who are you?"

She removes her hood fully now. "Your daughter."


	5. Chapter 5

You snort. "OK. You shot your wad on that one. Jig's up."

"Hmm?"

"This is a dream. This is a nightmare. You are my sarcastic stalker hellbaby sent by the Horrorterrors and Roxy Lalonde to torment my wretched think pan while I stew in my own juices in a prison cell. Nice one."

She's still smiling. "While that has some startling elements of truth to it, it's missing the whole picture. I promise you I'm not a delusion. And also that I'm not your daughter in the traditional sense of the word. Maybe I should have said that first."

"Yeah, that might have toned down my alarm a little." You pause. "I mean, it's nothing personal, it's just I'm not...good with kids. Let's say."

"I'm not a kid," she points out. "I'm about your age."

"Yeah. Wow. How does that work? Are you a time traveller, talking to my teenage self in order to bring about the convoluted parameters necessary for your unlikely conception to occur in the first place? Is this _Back to the Future_?"

"No."

"'K, good, because I think I probably would have gotten a kick out of purposely thwarting your existence if that had been the case. Again, nothing personal."

"I'm afraid the true explanation is even more complicated than any of that. To put it simply, you and I are related by an esoteric process of genetic reamalgamation."

"Really." She sits down on the grass, but you can't bring yourself to let your guard down. Not because she frightens you, but because you know from experience that the awakening you're going to experience soon is going to be a rude one. Oddly, she seems to sense your alarm. "I've been reassured that we'll have adequate time to have this talk, so you can have a seat if you wish. Like I said, we've been looking for you for awhile."

"Who's we?"

"My friends, and yours. You should run into them soon. If all goes well you'll be seeing them soon while you're awake."

Your stomach makes a funny little knot. "They're not...looking for me, are they? My friends, I mean."

"Well, they already know where you are, on Derse, but unfortunately none of them have access to the Medium at the moment. I've been in only sporadic contact with them, of course, but from what I can tell they are all working their hardest to get to you."

You shake your head. "Tell them not to worry about me. The mess I'm in is my own fault. Tell them to protect themselves before--"

She cuts you off. "Even if I had a reliable method of contacting them I don't think I would tell them that. Would you listen to the advice of some strange dream figure who claims to be your daughter, especially if she told you to leave one of your friends to suffer?"

"Well, looks like I kind of am doing that anyway, so why the hell not? It's my life, isn't it? If I don't give a shit about what happens to it, if I want them to save themselves before the Batterwitch gets her tentacles around them too, then isn't that my business?"

"It is," she says slowly. "Just like choosing to try and save your life is theirs."

"Then I should have asked her to kill me," you snap. "I should have asked her that first day she brought me to Derse."

You know that it had to have been that first day. She would gladly have let you bleed out then, in front of the Dignitary and the reporter, but she wouldn't do that now, even if you begged. That's what she tells you constantly: she'll kill you in her own time, when she decides. Not a moment sooner.

Your outburst is greeted by awkward silence, the first of many among this newly expanded family circle, you can only assume. When she finally speaks she's watching the ground between you intently and of course she's no longer smiling. "I can't help you directly, since I can only speak to you in your dreams. And I'm not a healer. I can't...fix what's been done to you. I'm a Seer. All I can do is tell you the path that I can see you taking. The one that leads to your freedom."

She pauses and finally looks at you. She's obviously waiting for you to speak, to snap at her again, but fuck that. You are over snapping out emotional outbursts to stranger-daughters. You were over that five minutes ago. You can only watch her as she goes on.

"First, I should probably warn you that there are many paths you could take, and I'm not absolutely sure if the one leading to your freedom is also the one that becomes part of the alpha timeline. That is to say, I don't know if you actually succeed in escaping. I can't tell you that for sure."

Your heart's beating a bit faster than normal. If it weren't for that pained look in her freaky, too-light eyes, you might be back to believing that this is all a story you're telling yourself in your sleep as you dream the dreams of normal people. "Some seer," you say.

A hint of her smirk is back. "I know. Predicting the future is a tricky business, however, and I think you'd rather I be straightforward than feed you platitudes. It's the truth: it is entirely possible that you escape, but I'm not certain."

"Wouldn't I have to escape, if you're my daughter? You couldn't exist otherwise."

She shakes her head. "It doesn't work that way. Like I said, it's complicated."

"Downright fucking esoteric is what it is. You know, if you were actually a fortuneteller I think this is the point where I'd be demanding my money back and storming out of the tent."

"I know. But I want you to realize that you can't depend upon temporal inevitability to solve your problems. It's an important lesson for anyone to learn, especially someone in your position, but I do realize that as pep talks go it's an incredibly shitty tactic."

You shake your head. "It is, but it kind of makes me believe what you're saying? If you were a figment of my imagination I have to think that you'd be telling me something a lot more comforting-sounding." You pause. "Although I suppose if you're a figment of my own imagination it's entirely possible you would couch your prognostications in terms that would make them seem more believable to me personally and I'm over-thinking this, aren't I?"

"Yes."

"She'll be back soon, too. Look at me, sitting here pissing and moaning about your fresh as hell pep talks. I'll let you finish."

"Great, but it's like I said: we do have time. Her Imperious Condescension is busy communing with the dark gods."

"Yeah, I know. She loves those squiddy freaks."

"The Condesce was raised by a minor god of the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors. She grew complacent and that's what weakened her connection to her caretaker, and what caused, eventually, the devastation of her people. Now she's growing complacent again. She assumes that the dark gods will accept any version of reality that she feeds them, even as she keeps the Prince of Heart locked away and secretly carries out the tasks of the great demon who is the Noble Circle and reality itself's greatest enemy." She pauses again. "Sorry. This is a lot to take in, I know, but we don't have forever so I'm trying to be concise."

"Doesn't come easy, does it?"

She smiles again. "Not exactly. The point I'm trying to make is that you are the true prince of Derse and the gods are predisposed to favor you over her. You've been awake on Derse all your life, haven't you?"

"Yeah...."

"And who is she? A carpetbagger. A usurper. Easy pickings for you, even without the dark gods on your side."

"I don't know how right you are about that, but at least as pep talks go this is a huge improvment."

"I'm glad. I don't know how exactly you will succeed, or what you need to do to heal your splintered self--"

"My splintered self? Do you mean my dream self?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, I thought that was obvious."

"I guess," you say slowly. "Asshole's been AWOL for ages, though. I don't know what happened to him, or even if he's still alive."

"Oh, he is. I can tell you that with one hundred percent certainty. It's not completely surprising, given your aspect, that part of your journey would deal with the rejoining of your sundered selves."

"That's assuming I succeed, though. We're still not sure about that, are we?"

"No." She looks a little uncomfortable. "But can I give you my opinion that, personally, I...well. Given what I know about you, I wouldn't bet against you, Dirk."

"That's really touching, thanks." It is, but it's also kind of terrifying. Kind of infuriating. "It's nice of you to say, but I still don't know what the hell I'm going to _do_. I don't even know who the hell you are, except that you're my daughter."

"I didn't introduce myself, did I? I'm Rose."

You narrow your eyes. Talking to her has been giving you a lot of irritating feelings of deja vu, but suddenly you can put your finger on something. "Wait. You're not...you're Roxy's mom?"

"Yes."

"And you're my daughter."

"Yes."

"So Roxy's my granddaughter."

"No."

"Oh thank god. I'm confused as hell but I think I'm grateful for that anyway."

"You and I will meet soon," she says. "In the Medium. My companions and I are traveling there right now. When we do, things will make sense to you. For now I'm afraid I have to do the irritating Seer thing, where I tell you that all my predictions will make sense at just the right moment, which is also the moment when it's too late for them to do any good."

You feel a smile on your face for the first time in...well. A very long time. "As far as I can tell, what you're telling me is that I've had the power to free myself inside me the entire time. I was wearing the ruby slippers and if I hadn't been such a dumbass I could have clicked my heels and been back in Kansas a long time ago."

"That's a bit of an oversimplification. Which unfortunately is all we really have time for, so sure. You have to reunite with your dream self."

"You truly are Roxy's mom, all this Wizard of Oz shit."

"As long as it helps you escape the Wicked Witch." She looks up suddenly; the previously clear blue sky is filling with dark clouds, the likes of which don't seem entirely natural to you. "Speaking of."

 _Shit_. "She's coming back, isn't she?"

"I'm afraid so."

Your stomach is doing flip-flops. Your voice sounds remarkably level to your ears as you say, "You couldn't buy me anymore time?"

"I'm sorry."

You close your eyes. You never realized how much you hate waking up until now. It always sucks, but this is going to be physically painful, and you weren't even injured when you fell asleep. "Will I see you again?"

"The next time you sleep, ask around. Some of us are very likely to be near. If you see Dave..."

"Dave? Do you mean my bro? What's he doing here?"

"He's traveling with me. He...wants to see you. Sort of. You should talk to him."

"Shit. That's the guy I sucker-punched, isn't it?"

She smiles. "I'm afraid so."

"Right. Cool." You rub your eyes. "You know, I'd rather face like fifty guys I sucker-punched than wake up in that cell again." She doesn't know how to respond to that. Her too-light eyes wrinkle up and her barely visible brows knit together. It hits you like a punch to the gut, but that might just be the chess guys in your cell, trying to wake you up. "Thanks, Rose." Your mouth's dry. You've got this weird prickly feeling on your skin, and the muscles around your eyelids are twitching. These sensations always precede waking up.

"I wish I could help you more," she says, her face still screwed up in pained thought. "I wish I had more help to offer. All I can do is read up and give you advice."

"Dad's very proud of you, Rose," you say, and it's actually a point of pride to you that the last thing you see before waking up is her starting to laugh for the first time.

"Auntie Em, Auntie Em," you say to nobody when you realize you're back in the cell. "Come back, Auntie Em."

"You really are losing it, aren't you, Dirk?" asks the Condesce. "Get up. We have shit to discuss, you and I." She attaches your leash and pulls you out of the cell.


	6. Chapter 6

**> The Condesce: Commune with dark gods.**

If anyone could do this and fail to be disconcerted, it is probably you. You stand on the highest tower of your castle. It is always possible to hear their whispers from there, but when the moon eclipses the bright light of Skaia, the voices of the dark gods shriek and cannot be ignored. The cries themselves are not physically audible, but the cacophony inside the brain is almost unbearable.

Not to you, however. You've heard the psychic noise ever since you were a wriggler. Your lusus was whispering to you like this when you were still in your recuperacradle. You usually find it soothing, but not today. Today the constant beseechings and shrieks get under your fins, get stuck in your gills.

You are now screaming mad at Dirk.

You rush to his cell, where Dirk is awake. You can tell; after all the times he's tried to fake unconsciousness when you come into his cell, you always can. He's mumbling some crap, but you snap at him to shut up and drag him up by one of the straps on his harness, which you have made him wear ever since he grew a backbone last week and tried to escape.

"Come on," you snap at him as you attach the leash. "Get moving." He maybe really was sleeping that time; his movements are sluggish and he trips over his feet, which isn't like him. Even when he's at his very limit, he almost always keeps his balance. It's one of the many things about him that pisses you off. Everything he does suddenly infuriates you; you haven't been this angry at him since the day he tried to escape.

You were actually taken aback at how mad that made you. You don't know what he was thinking. Either the fall over the balcony would have killed him or he would have been instantly recaptured trying to run away on broken ankles.

"You are cracking up, Dirk," you told him afterwards as you unpacked the harness. (You had wondered why the former queen of Derse kept a harness around. You asked Jack later, just to see him snarl at you.) "Do you realize that at this point, _I'm_ the one who has your welfare most at heart? _Me_? Apparently there is still room within my ancient, dessicated, collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system. How many times, after all, have I mended your broken bones?"

"How many times have you let them break my bones?" he asked. He was cradling one of his arms to his chest at that very moment, in fact; you heard it crack when the Brute yanked him by the arm to haul him back in the throne room. He had been kicking and flailing more than he had in days, even after both Brutes had grabbed him and obviously there was no point to it anymore. Standing in front of you made him still again. His face was pale, like it always is after a bone break. He gasped as you made him raise his arms to put the harness over his head.

"It's remarks like that that get your bones broken in the first place. Well, that and your boundless fucking stupidity. Did you really think you'd make it? Fucking little ingrate. Weren't you just complaining the other day that I don't give you clothes? What do you call this?"

"Not clothes," he said with a wince as you tightened the straps around his shoulders. "Like I'm a living CollarMe ad, I guess. Fuck, I don't know."

You grabbed his wrist with one hand and ran your nails lightly up the broken arm with the other. You squeezed the bruised part of his arm, the part just below his elbow where the break had been. His pasty face turned bright red. There aren't a lot of things you like about Dirk, but you do like this. His screams always start out low in his throat, then get frenzied as they reach a higher pitch and become hoarse.

When he gave you a good scream, you healed him. That's usually how it works. Like a reward. His face was still red afterward, and he didn't talk for awhile. Seeing him subdued like that, actually, could probably be said to be your reward. 

Right now, however, just a scream isn't going to cut it. You drag him after you; you are taking him back to the tower where you have just been, where you have been speaking with the Horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring. He stumbles again and instead of waiting for him to regain his footing, you hook a tentacle under one of the straps of his harness and drag him the rest of the way up the stairs. It's a long way up; after awhile he stops trying to stand back up again, which also isn't like him. When you reach the top of the tower he slides down and sits with his back against the stone ledge.

"I hope this isn't going to be a pattern, Dirk," you say. "I do enough for you without having to drag you after me everywhere."

"Yeah, good point," he says. "You've never had to drag me before, have you? I don't think you've ever even broken one of my legs. What gives?"

"Thank you for pointing out that oversight," you hiss through your teeth. You're crouching in front of him with one hand squeezing his throat. The other is holding your culling fork to his chest. "I'd love to correct it, but I have other shit to do first. You're going to tell me where your dream self is hiding. Right now."

"I thought it didn't matter to you."

You press the culling fork right where you know humans have their hearts. "Tell me."

"I don't know. I don't think I have one anymore."

"That is un-fucking-true, Dirk."

"Shit, it's only _my_ alternate consciousness. You probably know better than I do, Your Condescension."

You slap him, hard. A few of your rings leave cuts on his cheek. "What part of 'not fucking around' are you not getting, Dirk? You know how I know?" You take your culling fork away and point it towards the night sky. "Them. They have seen it. They can see everything, Dirk. Do you hear them? Listen to them calling to you, Dirk. Do you hear that? Can you feel them shouting in your mind?" You see him wince; you know he can. He squirms in your grip, so you bring your culling fork back down and slam him into the wall with it. "They know so many things, Dirk. They can see so much, but do you know what I know for a fucking _certainty_ that they can only guess? I know when you're going to finally die, because it will be at the end of this conversation if you don't tell me _where the fuck he is_." You slam him into the wall one more time, and that makes him crumble.

He shakes his head. "I don't know, I don't know--"

"You're lying."

"I'm not." He's still shaking his head. "Please, I would tell you if I knew."

The thing about Dirk is that when you get him to a certain point he becomes not nearly as unreadable as he likes to think he is. His whole body is trembling, you can feel it vibrating against your culling fork. You are an expert in duplicity and Dirk is not. You don't think he could fake this. He really is this close to crying in your arms all of a sudden, so you do what comes naturally: you shoosh him. 

"I would tell you if I knew," he says again. His voice is muffled because your hand is on his chin now, and you're running your thumb thoughtfully over his lips. Your moirail has been dead for sweeps and sweeps, but these motions are like riding a two-wheel device, even for you. You feel the tense lines in his face as he screws up his eyes to keep from tearing up, and you hear noises like a choked barkbeast coming out of his mouth. You draw his face close to yours and run your free hand up his neck and over his face until you feel the tenseness fade away from him. You still hold your weapon, but your grip is weaker and you're no longer pressing it against his chest.

Despite what one might think, you have always been an excellent moirail. He is now sobbing like a wriggler into your hand, no longer trying to say anything at all. You don't feel anything except a surprising warmth as he sinks his head against you, which is why he's able to surprise you for the one second that he needed. 

In one movement, he wrenches your weapon out of your grip and throws you away from him. In your surprise he manages to push you against the stone ledge. Your back hits the hard rock and you grunt, but easily evade him when he lunges at you.

**> The Condesce: Strife**

It's not quite an equal fight; the roof of the tower is too small for either of you to really maneuver. You and your hair take up most of it, which is an advantage for you. There's no way he can get past you to escape down the stairs and he's not going to land a hit on you, either. You're going to make sure of that.

"Dirk," you say as he lunges and misses again. "Dirk, stop all this scurrying around." He doesn't, he won't. When he lunges next he almost loses his footing, but recovers just in time. "How do you expect to defeat me with my own weapon?" You manage to coil a tendril of your hair around his ankle, but he uses his leash as a whip and strikes it away before you can pull his foot out from under him.

He's not a bad fighter, but then you already knew that. He wouldn't have survived your drones' attack otherwise. He has to know, though, that this is no good. "Even if you got to the bottom of this tower, where would you go? Not that I'm going to let you leave, and not that you're going to be able to kill me, of course. But just think about it. I know you're emotional right now, Dirk, probably pretty vulnerable, but just take a second and use your wretched think pan." He snaps the whip at you suddenly and just misses striking you in the face. You laugh. "Dirk. There's no way you're getting out of this alive unless you stop and _think_."

He's just moving around you in circles now, feinting and lunging and you know he must be starting to see the futility of it because his thrusts are getting less and less refined. When he gets less controlled he's a little harder to dodge, but easier to strike. You manage to finally grab his ankle and yank it out from under him, but he rolls into the fall and is back on his feet again with a movement so seamless you can't help being a little impressed. "Then don't," he says through clenched teeth. His voice still sounds raw from the crying he was doing earlier. "Don't let me get out of here alive. I fucking dare you."

You narrow your eyes and strike out for him. Your punch misses but when he dodges it he over balances and you're able to trip him again. He rolls away before you can even make a grab for the culling fork. "You're a fool, Dirk," you snarl.

"Probably," he says. "Probably I was a fool for not calling you out on it sooner." He lunges again and misses, only managing to graze your side, but it's when you're hissing with the pain that he manages to surprise you one last time. Suddenly he's shoved the culling fork back into your grip; you are now holding your weapon in your hands. One set of tines is still buried in the stone wall behind you, but he's holding the other end of the fork up to his own neck. "Go ahead." Slowly, he takes his hands away. You're now the only one holding onto the weapon, right up to his slim neck. "Do it."

The pause then goes on for a very long time. You stare into his newly smug grin and his face, which is still wet from when he was crying earlier, and you suddenly feel a rush of hatred so warm, so black, that you wish that you could do it. Your fists tighten around the fork as you finally start to speak. "One thing I will say for you, Dirk: your poker face isn't much, but you occasionally can call a bluff with the best of them, can't you?" You strike him over the head with the brunt of the fork and watch him crumple to the ground into unconsciousness once more.


	7. Chapter 7

**> Dirk: Have another family reunion**

You are now Dirk again. Even though you're always uninjured in your dreams, you still have a kind of phantom pain in the top of your head where she just hit you. You're going to have one hell of a bruise whenever you have the misfortune of waking up again. Maybe even a concussion, and you suspect she's not going to bother healing that sort of thing for you anymore. You think that, given how she's started treating you, you've probably gone beyond that.

You stand up straight and look around. Instead of being in a forested wilderness or desert, this time you find yourself in an abandoned city. You're standing in the empty street, surrounded by boring gray skyscrapers. The sun is a single fiery eye in the dull sky above you, so you assume this dream has landed you on planet Earth. It's a planet Earth as you never knew it, unflooded and dry.

It's very dry; you're really hot all of a sudden under a too real sun, but before you get into the shade on the pavement, someone's yelling at you. You look around and don't see anyone, but that's because you didn't think to check out what was above you. The kid with the cape is jumping down from one of the shorter buildings on the block. He really is your bro, you can see now. Even has the same shades. Also, judging from the painless way he lands on the pavement, this kid can fly, which as far as you know is something your bro never managed to do. He doesn't tackle you, but he is cussing you out again like last time.

"What. The. _Fuck_ do you think you're doing?" he asks you.

You can only stare. As a response, this is a bit more vehement than you might have expected. "Something wrong? Also, were you just chilling up on the roof of that building? Are you, like, some kind of dream superhero or something?"

"You're asking _me_ if there's something wrong?" he asks. "When you're the one who almost committed suicide by giant fork?"

You wince. "Oh. Did you see all that?"

He laughs hollowly. "Fucking did I. Thanks to the magic of dream bubbles and our fathomless squiddy tour guides through this lightless netherworld, yes, I did have like a primo seat to my bro's naked wrestling match with a fishy alien, it ain't no big thing, I guess. Fucking hell."

The sheer degree of how mad he is throws you off. "Well. I feel like I'm missing something here."

" _You could have taken her, dude._ The hell were you thinking?"

You shake your head. "I don't know if I could have killed her. Not with that stupid trident, anyway. I don't think she can be killed the normal way." You paused. "The normal way in this case is being stabbed through the guts with a giant fork, I guess."

"Thanks for clarifying that for me, bro. Even if you couldn't've beaten her, why did you...?"

You shrug. "It was the only way I had to test out a theory of mine."

"You...god, I can't believe you, you risked your life for a fucking theory?"

You start to get a little annoyed. "Look, she wasn't going to kill me after she made that huge deal about wanting to know where my dream self is."

"How do you figure that?"

"Because that's not how it works. I guess I'm kind of a noob to how this game is since I got kidnapped by a homicidal fish queen before I could play it much, but my under-fucking-standing is that for most people, when they die their dream selves die with them."

"Unless they're revived, which is exactly my point. Pretty sure evil squidwoman wasn't about to put you on a quest bed after she carved you up like a turkey, and she sure as hell wasn't gonna kiss you, thank jegus, since I'm pretty sure seeing that would be the only thing more disturbing than seeing you dead in a pool of your own blood _again_. Fucking Christ."

You feel like a few sentences in that speech there deserve some clarification, but both of you are too mad for you to ask. You go on. "That's _my_ point. My dream self is not hard to deal with. If she really wanted to kill him, she could just kill me. But she didn't. Why not? And why was she so bent on getting me to tell her where he was hiding?"

"Why don't you tell me, o wise bro."

"Because Rose was right. Because what the Horrorterrors were telling me was right. I do still have a dream self, and I think he must be awake."

"What the hell. That doesn't even make any fucking sense."

"It is a bit weird. I think...travelling through the Furthest Ring or something must have fucked up our connection somehow." You shrug. "An alien friend of mine told me once that my path through this game would deal with some bullshit with alternate selves. It's just part of my aspect, I guess, and I agree that's it's all pretty stupid but it's just how it goes."

His eyebrows appear over the rims of his glasses. "Alternate selves?"

"Yeah. Old hat to me at this point. I have been fuck-deep in alt-Dirks before. It's a goddamn nightmare if you want to know the truth. The point is that the Horrorterrors told me that they have seen my dream self, so they know she's been lying to them about me. That's why she was so angry at me just now, probably." It kind of depresses you that you've gotten so good at reading her moods that you know this with such a certainty.

Your bro is now shaking his head. "You. Are. Fucking. _Nuts_. You're just like Rose. I don't understand how the two of you can listen to what those giant eldritch gobs of peel-and-eat shrimp tell you--shit, not even _tell_ you, they whisper that shit right into your brain like some sort of creepy psychic uncle-- and then both you and her are all 'Oh, wow, I am going to put my full and utter confidence into what you just told me, giant incomprehensible fiend.' Ask Rose about it sometime, see what she tells you about listening to Horrorterrors.

"And also, just a little bit of advice about Rose," he goes on before you can stop him. "Yeah, OK, I know she's super smart and she knows her shit and is right about stuff like ninety percent of the time, but guess what? That other ten percent of the time? Can be a fucking catastrophe. Believe me, I was there for one. It was an explosion so big it was literally the size of two universes. And put your eyebrows down, I wasn't misusing the word 'literally' there, not that I'd give a fuck if I was."

You fail to lower your eyebrows. "Is that so," you say slowly.

"Yeah it fucking is. It also literally killed me and literally turned me into the cape-wearing dapper-as-fuck asshole you now see before you."

"So you died? You're dead and I'm now talking to your really long-winded, melodramatic ghost?"

"God, fuck me," he says. "How is this conversation somehow going even worse than I thought it would? It's going even worse than the one where you punched me."

That, at least, finally makes you lower your eyebrows. "I am sorry about that. I guess I thought you weren't real." You start to feel hesitant for the first time. Your adrenaline from the fight is starting to come back down again. "About that. About...Rose being wrong sometimes."

He looks up at you; he seems to have talked himself out now. He just watches.

"I was wondering if maybe that ten percent she was wrong also extended to...her being my daughter?"

He looks surprised for the first time. "What? No. No, that's true. Why would she lie about that?"

You shrug. "I was hoping she was more, like...misinformed? I don't know. It's nothing against her, it's just...I am, like, the last person on Earth who should be having a kid. Any kid."

He gets an odd look on his face. For the first time, he doesn't know what to say. "Um. I...wouldn't worry about it?" 

"Just as well, I guess. Is she around? Can I talk to her?"

"Yeah. Come on."

He takes you to an almost familiar-looking building across the street. It's your apartment, you realize. Maybe your apartment as it once looked.

"How does this work?" you ask as you two get in the elevator. "Last time she told me that she was talking to me while asleep. Is she sleeping up here?"

"No. That's probably what she was doing last time she visited your bubble. Last time I saw you I was asleep, too."

"My bubble?"

"That's what these are. Dream bubbles in the Furthest Ring. The Furthest Ring's where me and her and all the weirdos we're traveling with are now."

You nod. "Hence your aversion to the creepy, squiddy gobs of seafood that live there. I get it now."

He shakes his head. "Nah. Shit, I've been travelling through deathbubble hell for like two years now, I find the Horrorterrors positively _quaint_ at this point. They're like creepy neighbors that are always making meth or selling crack on the weekends, but you know their schedule now so you can sort of plan your life around their freakouts. It wasn't the Horribleterrible neighbors that made me flip my shit at you. It was...." His voice fades away, and then he shrugs. "Whatever. Doesn't matter. Look, I'm sorry for yelling like that. That was...well, it was really uncool of me."

You shrug, too. "It's a reasonable reaction to what went down, I guess." You hesitate now, too. At least when you were in each other's faces you had something to talk about. Now you're not quite sure what to say. You've never ridden in an elevator before, but this one seems to be moving incredibly slowly. "And...look, you don't have to worry about me, OK? I think I've got this under control. Maybe. I just want to find Rose again. Ask her some things."

"Yeah, OK." He sighs with a huff and hits the button again. "Next stop, flighty broad city."

**> Dirk: Reunite with your loving daughter**

This turns out to be easier said than done. Dave hits the button again another couple times. "God, why does this elevator have to be shit in life and in a dream, too? This asteroid is such a bear to get around."

"Asteroid?"

"That's what I'm on. See, you're asleep, or I guess unconscious by way of giant fork, whatever, while you're in this dream bubble, but we're travelling on this asteroid that is physically passing through it. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Good, because it still confuses the hell out of me." The bell to the elevator finally dings and the doors slide open. "Here we are. Let's see who we can find up in this shit."

He leads you down a narrow hallway you know very well. He opens the door and suddenly you're back in your apartment. It's not exactly the same place you've lived all your life, but the similarities are enough that walking inside it is jarring.

"What..." you say, and then can't think of anything else to say. This place feels so familiar, but it's not. This is not your beautiful house, this is not your beautiful Stiller poster.

"Dream bubbles operate on, like, points of common memory?" he says, leading the way down the hallway. "So this place is like a common point of reference for both of us. Yeah, it's awkward. We have just ascended to the highest tier on our echeladder of awkwardness. We're gonna both reach the dork tier if we're not careful, so don't ask too many questions until we find Rose, OK?"

"So this place is like a mix of my memories and yours?" you ask.

"What did I just--yeah. Yeah, it is." The two of you have reached the kitchen now. "Like I guess this monstrosity must be yours. What the hell is this, a horse?"

"Of course it's a horse."

"Why would you want a statue of half a horse bursting out of your wall like an alien busting out of John Hurt's stomach?" 

"Doesn't sound very appetizing when you put it like that."

"Fuck if it doesn't." He leads you to the hatch in the ceiling and slides the ladder to the ground. He starts climbing, but you pause before you follow him. Part of you is curious about what's in the rest of the apartment, and how it differs from the place you lived. You wonder how much of your shit is scattered about here. You wonder if Cal is around.

He whistles at you from high above. "Hey, come on. Like I said, no memory lane-ing until we find Rose." You follow him up onto the roof. The view from up here is different than what you're used to. There are buildings and skyscrapers, but they're all half-submerged underwater. Crows and seagulls are perching on the satellite tower and the air conditioning unit.

"'K," he says. "She's on her way." He sits down, crosses his legs, and looks out across the water, but you get the feeling that he's sneaking glances at you from behind his shades. 

You, for your part, are less shy about looking him over more closely. He, oddly, looks really, really young. Like your age or even younger. He has an unhealthy sort of pallor over his face, like he hasn't seen sunlight for years, which, if he's been travelling through the Furthest Ring like he said, is probably true. He's wearing that dumb cape, which you still don't really understand, and the knees of his pants and elbows of his shirt are scuffed with dusty streaks that look like colored chalk. 

"Look, I get that you don't want to answer my questions," you say finally after he's started tapping his fingers in a nervous tic against the metal of the air conditioner, making a rhythmic noise like the tick of a clock. "Which is fine 'cause I got a lot and we'd be here awhile, and I doubt we'd have time for all of them."

He grins slightly at that. "Dude, believe me. Time is the least of my fucking problems. And I guess, as long as you're here, it's kinda the very least of yours. Which isn't saying much, I know."

He goes on to explain. "Time is sorta my thing. Not to brag and bring up the 'l' word again, but I am literally actually a, like, time god? So we'll have enough time for you to talk to Rose, and figure out how you're gonna break out of jail and stuff." 'Jail' strikes you as a quaint understatement for the situation you're in, but you let this slide. "I can sort of slow down the passage of time while we're here. I won't let you suddenly wake up."

"How?"

"Like I said: time god. Manipulating the time stream or whatever isn't really that hard even in a normal place, and here in the Furthest Ring time is a lot more...mutable or something. Manipulating it is really easy, like fooling a kitten raised in a dark room."

"That's reassuring," you say. "Also kind of adorable. Then I guess I can ask you some questions. I mean, if we have time. Why are you here? If you're my bro, why do you look so much younger than me? Shit, dude, what's with the cape?" 

"First of all, this cape is sick as hell, that is what is with it. And look, it's not like we have _unlimited_ time and I kind of ...just don't want to get into it all right now?" 

"What the fuck, dude."

"Look, you're gonna find out soon anyway, when we get to your game session, which for you is in like, a day, if that, so why bother now?"

"Come on. Even if that wasn't a totally stupid cop-out of an answer, who's even to say that _I'm_ still going to be around whenever your asteroid or whatever gets here?" 

"Wow, OK, so I kind of thought that huge argument we just got into was about how you're _not_ going to get killed--"

"Look," you say, sounding more desperate than you really want to. He notices and leans forward slightly on his knees to listen. "If...if she kills me, or if...shit, I don't even know at this point. A lot of shit can happen, is what I'm saying. Shenanigans. But I feel like something got fucked up with me. I feel like my dream self and I must be two separate people at this point. Like I said, I'm just a dude who's really down with, like, alternate consciousnesses and all that bullshit?"

"I have no idea what you mean by that, but OK, please go on."

You start to pace a little, staring out across the flooded city and only sparing him a glance every few steps or so. "I know that if I die, probably my dream self will just take my place. Like, I know that's how it goes, that's how this game works, but at this point we're two different people. So if I die...I mean, all of this dies with me." You pause. "Which is probably a good thing. Fuck if I want to remember anything that's gone down since she took me, but...I don't want to forget either. I feel like...look, this is a really weird problem that I have, but when there's another _you_ out there you start to get really proprietary about, like, your own consciousness. Particularly when that consciousness is about to get killed." You stop pacing and stare at a crow, who dumbly stares back at you. That really is the gist of it: you are probably about to get killed and that, no matter how many consciousnesses you have, is _fucking terrifying_.

Your bro looks freaked; you have freaked him out with your creepy mortality talk, but he speaks anyway. "No, I get it. I think I get it." He keeps rat-tat-tatting on the metal surface of the air conditioner. "I don't know what to tell you. I can't tell you that it's not scary to die. Because it is, and I should know 'cause I've done it twice. But...bro, I have seen you do some...some really weird, fucked-up, _amazing_ things, and I..." he trails away and shakes his head. "Fuck," he says again. "Do we really have to do this whole song and dance? The pep talk and the tender hand-clasping and all that?"

You smile slightly. "Well, Rose did. Your talk was actually a little more effective than hers. Rhetoric-wise, I mean."

"Wow, was that even, like, a thing that was a concern?" He grins very slightly and shakes his head again. "I know you're going to make it, though. I don't need time god powers and a totally sweet cape to know that. All right?" He stands and approaches you, holding out a fist. "This is where we awkwardly fist bump to close out the inspiring part of our talk."

You stare at him for a second, and you think maybe his eyes wavered for a second behind his shades, but you were only fucking with him. "Yeah. Good idea." You bump his fist, filled with equal parts uncertainty and resolution, which are like gifts to you from your mysterious time god brother. 

Before you can say much else, maybe wheedle some answers out of him, the sky goes dark. For a second the whole _world_ goes dark. You're no longer standing on the roof of mutual memory condo in some weird quasi-Houston, you're just surrounded by darkness. You are, after all, in the Furthest Ring, you remind yourself.

"Shit," he says. "The fuck was that?" That's probably a bad sign; if he doesn't know, what chance do you have?

"Something happening?"

"I dunno. Asteroid's moving out of the bubble maybe?" He stands up. The world has flickered back now; you're actually standing _on_ something instead of just floating in a featureless void, but your apartment building and everything surrounding it is gone. You're just atop another featureless gray building. You can see others looming out of the dark. You suddenly really wish that you had looked around the apartment more. Even phantom memories are better than none at this point. "Fuck," Dave says. "It's the clown again."


	8. Chapter 8

**> Dirk: Boggle**

"What the hell--"

"Where's Karkat when you need him?" says Dave. "Shit. Don't worry about it. It's just another one of the people I'm travelling with. One of 'em's like, a weird juggalo clown minstrel dude. Yeah, I don't know, but it's like he's got these weird dream-bending powers? Don't like to think about it if I don't have to. Usually he doesn't bother with me or Rose or anyone who's not his bro. That's Karkat. Sometimes he resurfaces when we're going through a bubble and fucks everything up, though."

"Oh. OK. So that's why our--that's why the apartment's gone."

"Yep." He huffs a sigh. "I'm guessing he just came up for some air. Not that's there's much air or anything else up here, but I guess even clown juggalo murderers need air sometimes."

"Murderers?"

"Like I said, don't worry about it. Hopefully Rose gets here soon. If we do get killed by the juggalo troll then I want her to be here so she can inscribe my last words in her massive fucking tome dedicated to our adventure."

Your face must have shown a little bit of alarm, because he goes on.

"I was mostly kidding about that, though," Dave adds. "He can't kill me because I'm, you know, a god, and you're only dreaming."

"You know, Rose was doing a pretty good job of convincing me this wasn't all a bullshit coma fantasy, but with each word that comes out of your mouth I start to come around again."

He doesn't hear you; the wind has picked up something fierce and he's throwing open the trapdoor again. It opens to a winding staircase, not like the one from your memory. Wherever you are now, it's not your apartment. "This is some bad shit right here," he calls to you. "Come on, let's go to the lab."

You shrug and make to follow him, but before you can there's a vicious crack of thunder. You look up at the sky; it's filled with darker clouds than you've ever seen, so dark they seem streaked with purple. 

Dave's saying something to you, but his voice is lost in the wind. He's shouting now, but what right does he have to hassle you? You used to like watching thunderstorms from the roof of your apartment building. It was incredibly unsafe, of course, but at least it got rid of the seagulls for a little while.

This storm's a bit different. There's no freshwater smell as the drops fall on the ocean. Instead when the rain starts to fall it lands with hisses, like acid. It all strikes you as straight up fucking _portentous_. You suppose a storm in what is still, technically, your dream could be something so transparently metaphorical.

Dave's tugging on your shirt sleeve. "Bro. Come on. Into the asteroid. Bad shit's coming."

You're about to say you kind of figured that already when suddenly the bad shit does take that very moment to strike as a bolt of purple lightning.

Using "lightning-quick" to describe your bro's reaction would be an understatement, since he literally out-runs the bolt and pushes you out of the way before the spot where you were just standing becomes a heap of rubble crumbling into the stairway.

"Time god," you say, maybe a little bit dazed. "Right. Time god."

He stands up and wipes the dust off his knees. "That fucking clown. Come on." 

He offers you his hand to help you up and you take it without even thinking. Together the two of you pick your way over the rubble and down the winding staircase. The lights when you get to the corridor are flickering on and off, but you can make out a kind of computer terminal with multiple viewscreens at the end. Dave leads you to the door, but before you go through you stop. There's a figure hunched down in the corner, almost hidden by the massive computer terminal. You stop and crouch down. It looks so familiar...

"Oh, come on, bro," says Dave from the doorway. "Let's--holy fucking shit."

Li'l Cal is slumped in the corner by the computer terminal. "Is this another memory?" you ask as you pick him up.

Dave's shaking his head. "No. No, no, no. Put the fucking puppet down. Not the smartest thing we could do right now, OK?"

Cal feels different, but it's the same puppet. You just know he is. You throw him over your shoulder and stand up again, ready to follow Dave. "What's wrong?"

" _That_ \--that fucking puppet is what's wrong," he snaps. 

"Lil Cal? No, man. Lil Cal is the shit."

He visibly shudders. "I can't fucking believe this. I can't fucking believe _you_. I can't believe we can actually have, you know, a talk where you actually say some stuff that makes sense and aren't completely inscrutable for once and then you _have a touching reunion with a clown's puppet_ , just to make sure that all of that goes down the crapper."

"So have you met me before?" you ask. "You must have met me before. Is it a time travel thing?"

He literally throws up his hands. "God, fuck this. Where the hell is Rose? OK, put that thing down--"

"No."

"You are _not_ stealing the psychotic clown's bullshit coping mechanism, OK?"

"Maybe it's actually my coping mechanism," you say. "I have no idea how he got here..."

"Paradoxes. Motherfucking..." Dave trails off and covers his face with his hands. You suppose, dimly, that you're both at the end of your respective tethers, but you can't even care about that now. Even with the unfamiliar kiwi-lime green suit, you _know_ it's the same puppet. You're more sure of that than you are of anything else right now, which isn't saying much because you haven't been sure of anything since you were taken. You've been living a sort of half-life when you're awake and owned by the Condesce's, and the rest of the time you are in these dream bubbles, where your companions are your own memories and these familiar strangers. The puppet, as silly as it sounds, is the first thing that feels truly real to you.

Cal is _yours_. Weird juggalo minstrel clown murderer or not.

"Fucking hell," your bro mutters. " _Mother_ fucking hell."

"It sort of makes sense," you say, mostly to yourself because Dave's too disgusted to listen to you. "Cal was with me on Derse. He had a dream self, too. Maybe..."

Dave's still mumbling in disbelief, and the two of you can still distantly hear the storm raging outside in the dream bubble, so you have to shout before he pays any attention to you. "Hey," you say. "Hey. I'm waking up."

"What? Oh shit--"

"No, it's OK. Don't do anything. I think it's going to be OK."

He raises his eyebrows at you for a very brief second. "Are you sure about this? What about Rose?"

"Tell her that if both of us are right--her and me, I mean-- then I'll see her soon."

He nods, but his mouth twitches in displeasure. "Please don't tell me that damn puppet was the cure-all for your schizophrenic split dream-self waking disorder this whole time."

"I won't tell you that, then," you say. Your heart is beating quickly, and in addition to the usual twitching around your eyelids, there's a cold flush washing over your whole face. You suddenly realize that you are going to be underwater once you wake up. Still, you manage to say, calmly enough, "See you soon, bro," before you close your eyes and take a deep breath.

When you exhale, the air comes shooting out of your nose in a stream of bubbles. You open your eyes and see that you were right. You're submerged in water, with a rope on your ankle anchoring you to the bottom. 

You look around under the water, but there's nothing and nobody around. Part of you had hoped, even expected...but no, there's nothing, no sign of Cal or anything at all except the tether snaking down, chaining you to the depths of the pool. You kick furiously and resurface.

She's there, kicking her legs in the water and sitting at the edge. You suppose she must have tied up your leg and tossed you in the water, like she was daring you to wake up. She beckons you over and you suppose there's no point in disobeying.

There's not enough slack on the tether for you to get up on the ledge too, so you tread water in front of her and just watch. She's smiling.

"You're an excellent swimmer, Dirk," she says. "A natural."

You can't shrug while treading water, so you don't say anything. You just wait.

"Come here," she says, and she pulls you closer to her. She pets your wet hair and sets your hands on her lap. You feel like a dead fish, like something she caught at the bottom of the ocean and dragged up so she could rip it apart.

"Nice nap?" she asks you. 

"Yes," you say. It's the truth, actually, but what does she care? 

Not a bit, it turns out. "Ready to tell me?"

You shake your head. "It's a bit late to be starting this tactic."

Her hands are still on your hair; it's very, very dangerous, having her hands anywhere near you while you speak to her. You know that from experience. Maybe the weightlessness of the water is making you care less. "What tactic would that be, Dirk?" 

"The torture tactic. The one where you try to get me to talk." You pause. "What could I even say to you at this point? What could you even do to me that you haven't done already?"

She strokes your hair and presses your head down onto her lap, so your cheek is pressed against her leg.

"There's a lot that I haven't done to you," she says thoughtfully. "If you think otherwise then that's a failure of imagination on your part that surprises me, frankly. Knowing you as I do now."

She lets those words float there in the water with you before saying, "So. Are you ready to talk about your dream self now?"

"Man," you say, oddly disconnected from her and from the water and from your own brain as well. "I'm sick of that guy. He's all anyone wants to talk about anymore."

She makes a mocking little pouty face at you, smooshing your cheeks between her hands for a second. "Feeling a little left out, are you? That's too bad." She scratches down the side of your neck, behind your ear and up into your hair. Her nails are so stubby they barely scratch you, but you shiver anyway.

Despite your best efforts, this line of thought leads you inexorably to the AR. You have to think he got a hold of Roxy somehow, even after his shades broke and the apartment was burned down by the drones. All these extra selves of yours, just running around, fucking everything up. Not that you yourself haven't excelled in that area all on your own.

"Where is he?" she asks, not even sounding like she's interrogating you. She's being so gentle, almost nice. You wish she would go back to sneering and tossing you around.

"Doesn't matter."

Two days ago if you had given her an answer like that she would have snarled at you, scratched you, grabbed you by the hair and pulled, but this time her reaction is calm and all the more horrible for it. She snaps her fingers and suddenly the tether on your ankle is pulling on you. It drags you from her lap and back into the pool. You manage to take a deep breath before your head is dragged below the water line again.

The first time she submerges you, you waste a lot of energy and probably precious volumes of your air thrashing around, trying to outrun the slow creep taking you to the bottom. Your leg is shackled tightly. You are stuck; all you can do is wait for her to release you, but it's hard to get your panicking brain to understand that.

You can't believe you ever thought things were as bad as they could get. You hate to admit it, but she's right; believing that shows a lack of imagination, a lack of foresight on your part that, for someone like you, is despicable.

Suddenly you feel the tether extending again. The pool is so deep and the rope is so long that you can't even see how it's connected at the bottom, but you can feel the juddering movements as it extends once more.

You swim as quickly as you can to the surface. She's in the pool now, watching you with the familiar bored expression and displacing water like a barge. You get maybe two seconds worth of air before she snaps her fingers again and you're dragged back down.

You're incapable of measuring time when you're under there. You had thought that not much could get worse, but the silent stretch of minutes beneath the water is like being swallowed whole, like she is chewing you up and spitting you out over and over. You are just a fish on a line to her, like the worms you used to hook as you tried to catch something from the steel girders of your apartment.

The third or fourth time (fuck, are you supposed to be keeping count?) you sort of just...lose it. You thrash around, not even constructively. Water goes up your nose and into your throat as you try to free your ankle, which is about as useful an endeavor as trying to breathe the salty water. You pull and pull, clawing at the skin of your ankle and your Achilles tendon to get the rope off of you. You make yourself bleed; it's only a little scratch but the blood twines in the water and seems to surround you. That might just be your frame of mind, though. Blood in the water. Not a good sign.

You only stop when your hands are physically pried away from the rope by her ringed fingers. She easily unties your ankle and drags you back to the surface, dropping you onto the hard floor by the pool's edge. You're on your hands and knees coughing up water, and you don't think you'll ever take breathing for granted again. It's an involuntary action, sure, but you're always going to remember this. You can't believe you thought it couldn't get any worse. You can't, you can't, you can't...

She doesn't interrogate you anymore, not out of pity but because you can't stop coughing long enough to answer anything. You're a naked, hacking, sobbing mess. She doesn't seem to want to even touch you.

"Shit, Dirk," she says. "It's just a little water. Man the fuck up."

She takes you back to the throne room with her and leaves you in a wet heap on the floor for awhile. You sort of drift in and out of consciousness. You have the closest you'll ever come to what Roxy called normal people dreams. Mostly you hallucinate. Probably. Just thinking about Rose, about Dave telling you how he knows you can do it, makes you want to curl up from embarrassment and shame. You let them both down, but your brain is so fogged from almost drowning you can't even remember how you did that.

Lil Cal is with you, too, but he might be another hallucination. He's moving around the room erratically, but you can't remember why that was so important, why you were so excited only a few minutes ago, when you got the underwater wake-up call. 

You forget everything when she approaches you. She pets your clammy skin and rolls you over, pulls your body onto her lap. You go limp. You don't even fight her. Her words float down to you, like you're still at the bottom of a deep pool.

"Dirk," she says, "I don't have to hurt you. You realize that, don't you?

"I _choose_ to hurt you. I've been choosing to hurt you because...well, because it's fun. You don't react to much else, or at least that's how you used to be.

"Now you're a little different. Now you react to a lot of things in ways that I frankly find a little attractive. I'm sort of fond of you, Dirk, may the mother grub forgive me. 

"I know you're not fond of me. That's really not an issue. I'm the fucking queen. The queen does not need _fondness_ or _adoration_. She has that, by definition. No, what I get from you is fear. You are so frightened of me. I am the only thing in your entire world and part of you, a small part of you that can't admit it, not even now, loves me for that, loves me for it more than you hate me. Fear is the only emotion you can feel now, Dirk.

"That's the beautiful thing about humans. That's the one thing that makes me regret killing all of them. Humans are made of nothing _but_ fear. They hide it behind a lot of silly bullshit and amateur theatrics, but that's all it really is. They're afraid. That's how your ancestors died, Dirk. That's how all your stupid fucking species died: afraid of themselves, afraid of each other, afraid of me. Afraid of the dark." She pets your back while lifting up your chin and looking you in the eyes. "Afraid of a little bit of water."

Days ago, maybe even earlier today, you might have said something to break up this little speech. Now you let her do what she wants. Now you don't have anything else to do. You let her talk herself out, which she seems to have done. She holds your chin and looks at you. Her eyes, behind her purple goggles, widen. Her nostrils flare and you can see white glimpses of her teeth as they threaten to show themselves.

Days ago, maybe even earlier today, you would have shuddered at that expression. Now you don't even do that. Now you stare at her blankly, waiting for her to pull her next stunt, and she laughs, a low chuckle in the back of her throat, and drops your chin. She pulls your head onto her lap and keeps stroking your back, long enough that eventually you slip into semi-consciousness again. Her nails trail up and down your spine and you don't react to that either.

You sort of just float there with your eyes open and glassy, seeing nothing. You are so, so fucking sick of this, and the anger is the first real emotion you have felt since you woke up under the water. And at least one thing she says is right: you are scared as hell.

Finally the world stops spinning, and she's finally stopped with the stupid monologuing, and she's no longer gathering you in her lap like you're the little lost lamb that she's about to cull. She's leaving you alone now. Not that it matters.

It felt so _wrong_ , having her hold you. Not just the fact that she was a genocidal maniac cradling you in her arms, but that there were any arms at all. Her arms were stiff, suffocating when they encircled you, not floppy and soft like you're used to...Cal, you want Cal, and you can almost imagine that you've got him. She is gone and you're holding Cal again, you've got him draped over you, wrapped in your arms just like always--

"Careful," says Dave. He's crouching beside you. "You're getting all squishy about the damn puppet again."

You feel like you're deep underwater again, but you can see Dave's shades glinting at you in the silvery light--

"Am I dreaming again?" you mumble, and just the fact that you manage to spit those words out is impressive, considering. To your own ears you sound drugged. You're reminded of the time when you were 12 when you lost a bet with Roxy and very foolishly drank several shots of tequila with several more shots of cough syrup in quick succession. 

The desperate look in Dave's eyes (what you can see of them) is somewhat similar to the look Roxy gave you when she realized what a bad idea it was to mix 400 year-old alcohol with expired over-the-counter narcotics. "I don't even know, dude," he says. "You're in some kind of weird fugue state. I don't know what the hell she did to you. You're kind of flickering in and out here."

"You don't wanna know," you say, but he either doesn't hear or doesn't understand your mutterings. You can't tell if he's pulling away from you or if you are sinking deeper and deeper. You have this nauseous feeling every time you try and keep your eyes open or focus on anything. But you can't close your eyes because if you do your unconscious body will be all alone with her and at her mercy. She wouldn't hesitate to throw you to the bottom of the pool again to wake you up, to break your legs and arms until you're as boneless as Cal, to not heal them until you start crying and tell her how to find that other fucking you that's hiding out there, that other fucking you that's just another douchebag in Dersite pajamas.

You're still sinking, maybe even pulling away even faster in some weird dream bubble spiral, but distantly you can hear Dave shouting at you. "Bro. Bro, don't--fuck. You're so close, bro, you can't give up. You've got the _stupid fucking puppet_ and I hate to admit this but it actually, like, warms the cockles of my jaded time god heart to see you with it. I'm a fucking softie, I guess." He's rambling almost as bad as you are. "Or two years of living in the Furthest Ring has completely fucked up my view of what's 'heartwarming' and what's 'completely fucking terrifying.' Actually, that seems more likely, but I don't even care."

He makes a grab for your arm. There's a faintest hint of contact on your shoulder; he's trying to hold on to you. "The god-lobsters are right, bro. She is no fucking match for you. You have the fucking puppet, what more do you want?"

You must have made some sort of inquiring noise because he's shrugging suddenly. "I don't know, dude. I guess you did some sort of heart-y thing and phased the puppet to you. Frankly I find the idea kind of distasteful, but fuck, whatever. I don't care if Gamzee burns down the whole fucking asteroid because I somehow got my bro to steal his puppet back from him. You've got the damn puppet, there's no way you can't take her. Just go ahead and do it. Bro. Bro. Wake up."

You finally turn towards him. He's right there, in front of you, and while part of you would like to spend more time in death bubble hell, foraging through the remains of your old apartment with him, another part of you realizes that you have to do what he says. 

You sit up. "OK," you say to him, and wake up.


	9. Chapter 9

**> Dirk: Wake up. Wreck shit.**

You still are naked. You still are beaten. You still are half-drowned and choking on water and your own phlegm. She still is stronger than you, with a million fathomless genetically-engineered powers and an army of carapaces behind her.

But you are Dirk Strider. You are the Prince of Heart, the true prince of Derse, and she is a carpetbagger, a usurper. But, perhaps most importantly of all: you have that damn puppet. Three years ago Roxy cast aspersions on your ability to use Lil Cal to completely devastate an enemy in combat, so you employed the puppetkind strife specibus for the first time. That was three years ago, so by now you are pretty much the most elite puppet combatant of them all. You are also the only elite puppet combatant there is, of course, a fact that will also work in your favor. Nobody expects to get their ass beaten by a ventriloquist doll.

You stand up. Cal is draped around your shoulders. You were lying in the corner behind her throne, but she must hear you when you stand up. She turns to look at you, smiling her sickly fake smile as she does so.

"Awake again? So soon?" Her fake pouty smile fades to a narrowed-eyed, suspicious glance. "Did someone give you a doll to play with, Dirk? How absolutely fucking precious." She stands up. "Who gave it to you?"

You don't answer, of course. Your entire body tenses and you widen your stance. She's getting closer.

"Never mind. It's not important. If you need a little friend to cry over your troubles with, of course I understand. I'm not completely cruel, you know."

She's right; she's not. She has left her weapon over by the throne, for instance, which is a mistake that's going to cost her. Your heartbeat is going even faster now.

"So," she says. "You seem a little calmer. Are you ready to talk now, Dirk?"

You make an appearance of consideration before nodding. "I think I'm ready," you say. 

She has just enough time to show you that shark's smile once more before you attack.

**== >**

The next day's editions _The Enquiring Carapacian_ and Derse's other newspapers will cover the ensuing carnage that took place at the palace. The Condesce and her castle will be in such a state of ruin for the next week or so that she won't be able to reassert her base or prevent any nosy journalists from publishing their eyewitness accounts.

There were several eyewitnesses in the throne room when Dirk first attacked the Condesce. All of them describe a similar scene, but none of them seem to be able to believe what they are recounting. Everyone was shocked, no one more so than the Condesce herself. 

Conservative estimates place Her Imperious Condescension's age at around one thousand solar sweeps, if not more. She has quashed countless rebellions on her homeworld and beyond. She has survived the Vast Glub and the 600 year journey following it. She has navigated the Furthest Ring countless times as she oversaw the conquering and subjugation of two different planets in two different universes. She has stared Death itself in the face, but all of the carapace eyewitnesses are reasonably sure that this was the first time a subordinate had ever attacked her wielding nothing but a ventriloquist dummy.

By the time the dust settles and the fires are put out, Dirk Strider, of course, has flown the coop once again. When his escape is discovered and confirmed, the Condesce will rage and damage some of the remaining property that the Prince of Heart left intact. The entire planet and its moon is in chaos, so no one, troll or carapace or human, is present to observe a rooftop meeting between four people. Or rather, between two people and two puppets.

**> Dirk: Reunite with your loving clone.**

You are now a recently escaped, recently clothed Dirk Strider. The only clothing you managed to scrape up in the mayhem was the drab black and white livery worn by Dersite agents, but it's better than nothing. Cal is still dressed in that weird neon-green suit so you suppose he supplies enough color for the both of you.

"I know you're here," you say. "Come on, dude."

The other you steps out from behind the shadow of the tower. He has another Cal with him. Both of them are wearing Dersite jammies. It's kind of precious.

"I forgot how cute we look in our matching PJs," you say, but you don't walk any closer to him.

"Speak for yourself," says your dream self. "So what now?" 

You stare him down; doing this would be a lot easier with dark glasses on, which you suppose is a trick he's aware of. "I don't know. How are we going to do it?"

"Do what?"

You make a vague motion with your hands. "Rose had said something about...my journey having to do with reuniting my split personalities or something."

He shrugs. "Dunno about that. Who's Rose?"

The question floors you, almost. You are overcome with just how much this devastatingly handsome douchebag has missed, and you are suddenly convinced that he is not really _you_ , and that his Cal isn't really yours. He's a stranger. A devastatingly handsome stranger with great hair, but a complete fucking stranger nonetheless.

"Never mind," you say.

Your dream self looks unimpressed. "You're being cagey. I don't even gotta pull out some bullshit algorithm like the AR does, I can just tell." When you don't respond (what would even be the point of denying it?), he goes on. "Well, if the two of us do want to get back together--yeah, ha, let's laugh at that little joke right now and shut the fuck up--then I think the only way to do it is god tiering it up. And that means one of us has lie down on a quest bed and eat it."

You shake your head. "Not happening." You shift Cal around on your back and look towards the exit.

"I didn't think you'd go for that." He nods slowly. "Look. I don't know what happened to you. I can guess, but I have no way of knowing for sure, and I'm not sure if you're gonna tell me. Frankly, the fact that you escaped at all is hard to believe, but if anyone could do it I guess it's you. And I know that you don't want some douchebag with great hair all up in your business. So I won't pry, I guess. But--"

You want to abscond so badly right now. But he realizes that, he can tell just by the way you're tensing and the way your eyes are darting towards the exit. It's annoying as hell. He cuts himself off to stop you.

"Wait. Look, it's fine if you want to join the army of Dirk clones scattered around the Incipisphere. There's a lot of us, to be honest, so what's one more? Plus you somehow have obtained an extra paradox clone of Lil Cal, which is weird but also fucking bitchin' as hell, I gotta say."

You smile a little bit at that and he goes on.

"So maybe we will be all right. On our own. But the entire planet is still looking for you, so maybe you should take my advice before you going flying up to Skaia like a piece of gargbage."

You sigh. You are so, so tired and you just want to find someplace to rest. You want to find whoever of your friends has managed to enter the Medium, and you want to see if Rose and Dave were right, if they really will arrive in your session soon. "What advice is that?"

He tosses you two captchalogue cards in quick succession. One is an extra pair of your shades with the auto-responder program already uploaded to it, and the other is a transportalizer.

"It'll take you to Jane's planet. She's there, she's waiting for you. You still have to get Jake and Roxy into the Medium, but they're all expecting you."

It's like a weird dam in your chest; you want to see them _so badly_ that you just barely manage to say, "Thanks." It's the first time you've ever thanked yourself and actually meant it. You gather Cal around you, nod to the other Cal and your dream self, and deploy the transportalizer.

In exactly one day the asteroid will arrive in your session and you will finally meet Rose in the flesh. Dave will be with her, along with her travelling companions, but the first thing you will have to explain to her is that she was, in fact, misinformed: the reuniting of your sundered self was less important to finding the path to your freedom than was the reuniting with your sundered puppet. You will keep a straight face while saying this, but for some reason she will not be able to, and you will note with fatherly pride that it is the second time you're able to make her laugh.


End file.
